Moons' Dreaming (Children of the Rock) Read online

  “Hion will have the forest, sister. It’s inevitable.”

  She stopped pacing long enough to face him and proclaim, “It’s ridiculous! Hion’s family has been expanding Rhenlan for forty-five years. They’ll not do it at the cost of my holdings!”

  “Don’t think of it that way,” he soothed. “Think of this as an opportunity.”

  “To lose a forest? Why did I let you talk me into going through with this nonsense?”

  “I thought you wanted time while you thought the matter over. Emlie’s safe enough. In Edian. With Damon.”

  She waited for him to continue. He waited for her prompt.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “It’s a perfect opportunity.”

  Dea turned her back on him. “Not that again.”

  “I don’t see what you’ve got against the boy.” Palle assumed his most cajoling tone. “The alliance would be perfect for Dherrica and Rhenlan. You know Hion wants Shaper marriage partners for his children.”

  “No. Vray for Pirse, perhaps. That would be an alliance I could use. Rhenlan with my heir. Not Pirse threatened by Damon’s children.”

  Palle crossed the dais and put a comforting hand on the Queen’s shoulder. She stiffened but did not turn. “Why not both? You’d see the sense in what I’m saying if you weren’t so worried about the child.”

  “You heard Hion’s threat.”

  “Rhetoric, nothing more. He wants a quick resolution to this.”

  “Not rhetoric. Law. Should I have let his time limit pass? What else could I do? I have to think of my country first.” She turned abruptly, and dropped her head on his shoulder. “I’m so worried I can hardly think at all. I can’t sleep. I wish Pirse were here.”

  “There, there,” Palle comforted automatically, hand patting the white-clad back. Fool, he thought inwardly. You could have linked our family to the next king of Rhenlan, but you’ve missed your chance.

  * * *

  The coast of Dherrica stank. Prince Chasa of Sitrine wrinkled his nose as his ship drew closer to the sandy shore. Too much moisture, that was the problem. He didn’t mind the heat. His own Sitrine was just as warm in its northern reaches, but it was arid country, especially around the capital city where he’d grown up. This part of Dherrica always seemed so chaotic; cluttered and choked with vegetation and wildlife, much of it dead and rotting by the smell. Not at all a comfortable place. Pirse was either stronger than he was, or stranger, to spend so much of his time up here.

  Maybe both, Chasa thought as his friend came more clearly into view. At least he had the common courtesy to sweat. Pirse’s black hair was plastered to his forehead and his sea-green tunic showed dark blotches of perspiration under his arms and down the front of his chest. Pirse shifted his weight from one long leg to the other and absently patted his horse’s steaming neck. The shouted commands of the sailors on Chasa’s ship seemed to unsettle the animal, as if it had never seen ship and sail before. Then again, considering Pirse’s habits, maybe it hadn’t. Pirse liked his solitude. He wasn’t going to like Chasa’s message.

  Chasa reached behind his neck to tighten the thong holding his pale, shoulder-length hair back from his face. He wasn’t happy about having to deal with an unhappy Pirse. Sea monsters were easier to face. Safer.

  The ship shuddered once as its keel touched sand. One sailor threw the anchor overboard while another put the coracle over the side. Chasa waved his thanks and clambered in; a few strokes of his paddle sent the light-weight shell skimming across the last few yards of water that separated him from the shoreline.

  He grounded the flat-bottomed coracle far enough up the beach to enable him to step directly onto dry sand. Pirse’s horse nervously tossed its head.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Pirse called across to him.

  Chasa drew his boat entirely out of the water before crossing the beach to the other prince. “Ivey told me you were killing dragons. I thought you might like some help.”

  Pirse smiled, managing to look charming despite the state of his clothes and the dirt smudged across his face. “You’d sail across three kingdoms on the word of a self-admitted storyteller?”

  “The stories Ivey tells are true. Besides, it was only two countries. I met him in Rhenlan. Cross Cove.”

  Pirse grew instantly serious. “The Rhenlaners haven’t been fool enough to start trouble with your father, have they?”

  “There is no official quarrel between Rhenlan and Sitrine,” Chasa said. “In fact, some of the Rhenlan Keepers sent out their fishing boats to help us snare a sea monster that ate two of our merchant ships last winter. That’s what brought me to Cross Cove.”

  “One monster wasn’t enough for you, is that it?” Pirse asked.

  “I like to make myself useful.”

  Pirse beckoned him closer, then stood aside to give Chasa his first clear view of what was lashed behind the horse’s saddle. Not one, but two sets of dragon ears lay dull and leathery across the horse’s rump. “You wasted your voyage, my friend.”

  “I hope not,” Chasa said.

  Pirse looked at him sharply.

  “I wasn’t exactly planning on helping you,” Chasa continued. “I was planning on replacing you. You’re needed at home.”

  Pirse tensed. “What’s happened?”

  “Hion’s set his greedy eyes on one of your mother’s southeastern forests. Word has it they might come to battle over it.”

  “What? That’s madness!”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard.” Chasa kept his voice steady, not that it would help. Pirse’s stormy reaction would get worse no matter how reasonable Chasa tried to be. With good cause, this time.

  “So now I’m expected to go back and negotiate to keep our lawful lands?”

  “Your mother already sent a negotiator.”

  The Shapers of Dherrica had been mountain dwellers for more generations of Dreamers than anyone could remember. The cool heights, shrouded in mists or clouds for much of the year, bred the lightest complexioned people of all the Children of the Rock. Pirse’s naturally pale face drained to the color of the hot white sand beneath their feet and his fist slammed down on his saddle. The horse backed a step, but Pirse held it still.

  “She couldn’t, not Emlie!”

  “Ivey thought you’d want to know.”

  “I’ve got to get back!” Pirse eyed his horse, then the ship that bobbed placidly on the water, visibly trying to calm himself. “How long would it take you to get me to Bronle?”

  “Against the wind? Twelve days if we’re lucky. Twenty if we run into a storm. You know how changeable the coastal currents are.”

  “I’ll ride.” Pirse turned to his saddle and began unlashing bundles.

  Chasa watched his friend worriedly. “You’ll need supplies.”

  “I’ll take the relay trail, travel light. I can eat when I stop to change horses.” He lifted the dragon ears and dumped them unceremoniously in Chasa’s arms. “Do me a favor and look after these. Gods willing, I’ll meet you on the quay at Bronle and take them off your hands again.”

  Chasa awkwardly hefted the dragon ears to one shoulder. Pirse tightened the girth of the now nearly empty saddle, then flung himself up onto his mount’s back. Only his sword in its scabbard and a small bag of food added their negligible weight to the load the horse carried.

  “Be careful,” Chasa said.

  Pirse stood briefly in his stirrups. “Corporal Chelam is in the forest, hunting. Tell him I’ll see him at home.”

  He leaned forward and the horse sprang away, galloping eastward along the stretch of hard sand between the foliage and the water’s edge. After a hundred yards horse and rider veered into an opening in the wall of trees and disappeared from view.

  Chasa trudged back to the shore. He dumped the dragon ears into the bottom of the coracle, then returned to wait for the corporal.

  It wasn’t much, but it was the least he could do to help the prince of Dherrica.

  Chap
ter 3

  Aage drew in a lung-full of warm, humid air and gazed up the hill. No matter how often he came here, the subtropical forest of northern Dherrica always took some getting used to. He shrugged off his robe, which had been comfortable attire in the early morning chill in Sitrine, and folded it over his arm. Wearing only his light undertunic and boots, he began to climb.

  Near the top of the hill, an old man sat on a rock, holding the universe at bay. The wizard Morb didn’t look particularly old, but Aage knew he had been born in the generation of Dreamers before his own, hundreds of Shaper and Keeper years ago. The people in the nearest village probably thought of him as a middle-aged hermit, one of their own kind who chose to live up here above the roof of the jungle. They would never guess how he spent his days. If they did guess, they wouldn’t understand it. Rock and Pool, Aage thought, I hardly understand it, and I can do it myself.

  Aage reached a ledge twenty feet below the wizard’s perch. The rock where Morb sat was a round-topped boulder jutting out from the side of the hill, its surface so smooth and hard that not even the tenacious sucker-vines had been able to find a root hold. The hill was the highest point on this side of the valley, part of a modest range that ran between the Great River and the true mountains to the west. Those peaks rose sheer from the waters of the sea and marched southward without pause, to vanish into the endless ice and snow at the bottom of the world. In Morb’s youth, a kingdom of fisher-folk had lived to the west of the mountains. Only the sea, and a few icy passes, had connected them with the rest of the world, but they had been self-sufficient people, served by a wizard and Greenmother of their own.

  The plague had finished all that. Now, in all the world only two Greenmothers with their life-giving magic still survived. There were fewer Mothers of the other colors, too, but fewer were needed since death had claimed so many of the Children of the Rock.

  Morb shifted his grip on the power, and Aage hurried up the path toward him. The older wizard remained seated, legs folded, hands palm upward in his lap, cradling a largish bowl of water, in the center of which rested a round stone. Morb’s open eyes were fixed on his miniature rock and pool, his expression placid. All this registered on Aage’s outward senses, but his inner sense, his Dreamer’s sense, his sense of the power of the gods which filled the world and interlaced itself through most of its creatures, detected more. Morb was putting aside his task of holding the universe at bay.

  As Aage came level with Morb’s boulder, the wizard’s cave came into view. From the outside it was merely a black, semi-circular opening in the side of the hill framed with orchids, its precise outline blurred by trailing leaves and creepers. Inside were the bare necessities of physical life; a bed, a fire pit, and a little rivulet of water that emerged from the back recesses of the cave, formed a pool in a stony basin conveniently near to Morb’s hearth, then vanished down a crack between wall and floor.

  The lines of power that focused on the seated Dreamer shifted yet again, causing Aage to flinch. Morb’s gift sometimes awed him with its intensity. The Keepers in the nearby village would laugh at the thought of anyone being awed by Morb. They had no idea that a great slayer of monsters, dedicated to the protection of the Children of the Rock, lived a half-day’s walk from their doors. Keepers and Shapers judged by the evidence of their senses. They believed in the ship-eating monsters of the sea, the dragons of the north, the phantom cats of the plains, the once-deadly fire bears of the highlands, and the wind demons that swept out of the eastern desert.

  The monsters Morb fought did not share the same world with the Children of the Rock. Only benders of power—the Dreamers and, presumably, the gods who had begun it all—could sense the threat from Outside. Not monsters who devoured children or blew down entire villages or ravaged herds. Gray-haired, bandy-legged, round-faced Morb fought off the sort of monsters that could rip the world to pieces.

  Just an old man, Aage thought, his throat dry. Sitting on a rock, holding the universe at bay. Who, when he needs a nineday or two of rest, calls on me to take his place.

  The sensation of imminent threat receded somewhat as Morb completed his disengagement. The wizard lifted his eyes and smiled at Aage. “There you are.” He plucked his stone out of the bowl and drank off most of the water. Then he got to his feet. His crooked legs and short torso made him a good head shorter than Aage, but he jumped agilely enough from the top of the boulder to the path. “Well, what news of the world?”

  “Gavea died.” Aage unslung his pack from his shoulder and set it on the ground beside the boulder. He pulled out his handsomely carved cherrywood bowl and dug in an inner pocket for his favorite stone.

  “I felt her go. She was so very old. Saw four generations of Dreamers,” Morb said. “Five generations, if we count the youngsters growing up in your king’s country.”

  Aage found his stone, a water-smoothed ovoid liberally speckled with reds and oranges. “We can’t count either of them. We’ll see no hint of their gifts for years yet.”

  “Four generations then. It’s still a long time. Gavea deserves her rest.”

  “I think she gave up on us. I think she saw the end coming and couldn’t bear to be here when it happens.”

  Morb didn’t argue with him. Together they walked along the path and into the cave, where Aage filled his bowl from the pool. Not until they were outside once more did Morb speak.

  “You’re losing your sense of perspective again,” he said. “You knew Gavea well enough to know she never gave up. She stayed with us as long as she could. She simply wore out. None of us can bend the power indefinitely. Besides, it’s not as bad as you think. The world will survive.”

  “How can it, without us? We’ve dwindled to a mere handful. The Shapers’ numbers are diminishing as well, and the way they’re behaving they’re going to drag the Keepers down with them.”

  “The Keepers are too numerous for that.”

  Aage set his bowl on the boulder for a moment. “Numerous enough to be feeling more secure than they should. No one understands the danger. They could all be killed! That’s what worries me.”

  Morb stroked a thumb down his bulbous nose. “It’s their ignoring your prophecy that bothers you, lad.” His dark eyes twinkled. “Lack of attention always makes prophets a bit touchy.”

  Aage’s fair skin warmed with more than the day’s rising heat. He would have protested, but he sensed the regathering of forces that had been driven back by Morb’s last onslaught. Aage seated himself carefully on the boulder and placed his bowl of water in his lap. He took his stone in his other hand and centered it gently in the bowl. The fundamental figure of rock and pool instantly focused his attention and energies. Rock and Pool, the source of life, the source of his people, mother to the Firstmother. With his decades of experience, Aage could sink through the layers of meditation almost instantaneously, mind clearing, body relaxing. He abandoned hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste, as he became attuned to his other senses. Inner senses? Outer senses? There were no words for what he did now. Words were part of the world of Shapers and Keepers, animals and plants, mountains and lakes. Aage turned inside himself in order to face the Outside, the other worlds, the monsters searching for a way to invade his home.

  The lacy web encircling the world was such a tenuous, fragile barrier. Aage sensed the approaching Other, an essence of hunger and burning need. Formlessly it pulsed forward and touched his defenses, seeking an opening, straining to reach past him. Sometimes one of the Others slipped through. In the prosaic world of Keepers and Shapers it might become a dragon or phantom cat or shrieking storm, hunger coalesced as ripping, slashing, violent death. The animal shapes were unstoppable except by magic-forged steel. The less tangible manifestations Aage could eliminate himself, but only at a great expense of energy. Far better if he stopped them here, now, where his magic was strongest, the effort less costly.

  Where innocent lives were not at risk.

  Aage bent the power and began to fight.

  *
* *

  The King of Sitrine rubbed a hand over his balding head and sighed. His daughter wasn’t looking at him, but she tsked at him nonetheless. Sene’s frown lessened slightly as he continued to study the map spread out on the table in front of them. The parchment showed the three kingdoms of the Children of the Rock, and the plains of the horse people to the southeast.

  It was a new map; none of the dead kingdoms’ names appeared on the parchment. He traced a forefinger across the diagonal marks that indicated cultivation, wondering if he should have the map redrawn.

  Only a few ninedays ago, Dea and Hion had been squabbling over a forest village. This morning, shortly after Aage had departed for Dherrica, more troubling news had arrived, this time from Rhenlan’s side of the border. A fishing village, Gleneven, had been attacked by a large band of Abstainers. By now, help must have arrived from Hion or Dea, but it could be days before Sene heard how the affair had ended. He did not want to wait days. He wanted to know now.

  “Do we have any messengers left?”

  It was Jeyn’s turn to sigh. “No,” she said, with just an edge of impatience in her amused voice. “Should you want me to saddle Silvy, I will, and ride off to wherever you like. But you can’t know everything every moment. Not even Aage knows everything.”

  “We can forget Aage for now.” He tapped his finger on the upper left hand portion of the parchment. “He completely loses track of time when he’s off with old Morb.”

  “He always says he’s fishing,” Jeyn muttered.

  Sene glanced sideways at his daughter and smiled. “He saves his tales for you.”

  “I nag.”

  “What he’s doing is important,” Sene said more to himself than to Jeyn. “But I need him. I need his ability to find out what’s happening in the west.”